Reading Club: Teen Book | The Boy in the Loge

January welcomes the second meeting of the Teen Book Club, coordinated by the author Stella Kasdagli.

The book that we will read this month is The Boy in the Loge ("Agori sto theoreio") by Angeliki Darlasi. 

For this meeting, 30 members aged 12 to 16 years old get together online on January 31 to discover alternative worlds waiting to be created by the readers themselves: us! 

Don't worry if you don't have time to read the book to the end, or if you didn’t make it to our previous meeting:  in any case, Stella will give the signal every month, announcing the book that we will all be reading over the next few weeks. At the end of each month, the gang that has read the book (or half of it, at least!) will come together to share thoughts, impressions, feelings and concerns inspired by the book that we read, whether we liked it a lot, or not so much. 

A little more on January's book

The Boy in the Loge has been awarded the Prize for Best Novel for Children and Young Adults by the Circle of Greek Children's Books, and it is a perfect starting point for a plunge into difficult topics such as loss, pain, and refugeedom, as well as the consolatory power of the imagination, compassion and humanity. 

The story it tells is inspired by the true events of a group of refugees from Asia Minor living in the Municipal Theater of Athens in 1922; its protagonists are Drosos and Areti, but there is also a boy earning a living as dogsbody in the market, a girl who sews and unravels her bridal veil daily in a transparent forest of blooming cherry trees, an old man and his psaltery, a mute girl who sings, and Ariel, the spirit from Shakespeare’s Tempest - because, when you live in a theater, life can take on many different appearances. 
 

A bit more on Stella

Stella Kasdagli is an author, translator, co-founder of the non-profit organization Women On Top, and educator to teenagers and adults. She completed her degree (only God knows how) in French Philology in Athens, and went on to study Media Theory in London. She worked as an editor on Cosmopolitan magazine for a number of years, while also writing for other Greek and English-language publications and sites. She now designs and implements actions to empower women, writes on topics she’d like to see discussed more widely, translates foreign literature, and runs workshops for teenagers on body image, the internet and social change. She is also (phew!) co-founder of the Mentorkids network and the Bookworm online book club. She has written the books Koilitsa.com [Belly.com], Ithela mono na horeso [I only wanted to fit], 30 gynaikes pou allaksan ton kosmo (kai pos boreis na ton allakseis ki esi) [30 women who changed the world (and how you can change it, too)], and the Princess Athena series. She has two daughters, and they grow up together in Athens. 

Zoom

Sunday 31/01, 13.00

For boys and girls aged 12 to 16

Participation by online pre-registration

Pre-registration starts on Friday 08/01 at 12.00

Online participation will be available through a link that the first 30 participants will receive

To take part in the Reading Club, those who register must have read the book of the month (or half of it, at least). 

The Boy in the Loge ("Agori sto theoreio") by Angeliki Darlasi is available in bookstores from Metaichmio Publications.